


Happily Ever After

by thedevilchicken



Category: Kisa the Cat (Brown Fairy Book - Andrew Lang)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 08:03:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2843951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kisa's mother never broke her curse. Kisa comes to understand why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happily Ever After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/gifts).



When they're together, when Ingibjorg comes to the palace in the beautiful glass carriage that was once her mother's, Kisa lets herself into her room at night. She slips in beneath the blankets and she sleeps there at the foot of her bed, curled up around Ingebjorg's feet. Ingibjorg wakes momentarily, and she lets Kisa settle before she drifts off again into a sleep that's then somehow than before. 

Last night, of course, this happened again just as it has so many times before. They'd been planning the visit for months. It's such a relief that's she's here. 

There are scars at Ingibjorg's ankles, faded now that ten years or more have passed but still quite visible when her legs are bare. At dawn, when the sunlight shines through the palace windows and spills across the bed, Kisa pushes back the sheets and traces those scars with her fingertips. The wounds healed well, healed almost completely and Ingibjorg demonstrates this by the wiggling her toes, but Kisa always feels at least a little guilty when she sees them there. If she hadn't run away when the ladies came and saw her, Ingibjorg would never have been taken. If she hadn't left again that day, Ingibjorg would have been spared the trauma. 

Kisa wonders as she lies there if she perhaps meant for it to happen, because she knew all along what was there in the woods past the palace grounds. She'd lived there for years, after all, among the giants and the fairies, the ogres and the wolves, and Ingibjorg was unprepared. She hopes so dearly she didn't mean it, but she's still scared inside that she did. She almost wishes the curse hadn't lifted so that one day, when she finally found the one good dead that would transform her, she would have known that she helped Ingibjorg for the right reasons, from the goodness of her heart. After all, her mother's greatest kindness hadn't lifted her curse; why should Kisa's?

She traces the scars at Ingibjorg's ankles and watches as she smiles. She presses her lips there and then to Ingibjorg's knee and feels her fingers come down to stroke her hair. She runs her hands over Ingibjorg's thighs beneath the blankets, nuzzles her softly at the warm fold where thigh meets hip. Ingibjorg shifts and her thighs part. Kisa's tongue dips down between Ingibjorg's legs and she laps at her sex, long licks, little flicks, the movement languid until Ingibjorg is writhing, gasping, almost keening her name in pleasure even as she fights to keep quiet. Kisa knows what she likes. They've had time to perfect this. The warmth and joy of them being together always overcomes the guilt she feels. 

Ingibjorg pulls Kisa to her after and she holds her closely, tightly, like somewhere deep inside she remembers the time when she left her, like she's unwilling to lose her again. Kisa tries to tell her with her every gesture that she won't let that happen. She'll always be there. 

Kisa left the palace when her mother died, the day after she was buried in the grounds. She was saddened by her death, and she grieved, but she was saddest that she never saw her mother how she'd been before the curse. She'd never broken it. And so Kisa left, and she went into the woods to find her selfless act because she saw that if she stayed she'd have ended just like her mother, a feline companion to a human queen. She loved Ingibjorg, but she couldn't be a cat forever. She was so angry with her mother for settling for that. 

Of course, she didn't know what had really happaned until very much later. The letter arrived on her wedding day, left by a fairy on the sill by the open window. The handwriting on the faded page was her mother's, as neat as a cat's writing could be. She read it and she didn't understand, but she kept the letter close just as she keeps it close always. She missed her. 

She didn't understand until much later, until the day her own daughter was born. And then she knew. It suddenly made sense. 

Ingibjorg's home is three kingdoms away, across land and water. Travel there by carriage and by ferryboat takes at least two weeks. Kisa feels the distance acutely in almost every moment but when the letters arrive it's almost like her friend is there with her again, just like she used to be. She can almost see her, almost hear her when she reads the words she wrote. And lately, their two young daughters have begun a correspondence of their own. They all visit each other as often as they can. Kisa is so happy in her life, knows so much joy as she loves her husband and her daughter so very truly, but Ingibjorg's presence only ever makes her happier. 

When they're together, what her mother did makes sense to her. When her great friend the queen said she longed to have a daughter, she understood the sentiment; she went into the forest to see what she could do to help because she knew the powers of all the creatures living there. When no other could assist her, she called upon the fairy, the self-same fairy who'd cursed her while she'd still carried Kisa. And the fairy who she'd crossed, neither cruel nor benevolent as Kisa knows is the nature spirits' way, agreed to make a trade: she would take away all hope of the curse ever breaking and in exchange the queen would have a daughter. Kisa's mother would live her life cursed, she would end her days still a cat; her friend would have the daughter that she longed for, and Kisa would have a friend. 

Ingibjorg holds her tight as dawn breaks and Kisa smiles against the crook of her neck. Before the letter arrived, she never understood why her mother didn't leave to find a way to break her curse. She wondered why she stayed with the queen, why she purred in her lap and never thought to strive for more. When she'd read the letter, she couldn't understand the sacrifice her mother chose to make. 

Ingibjorg strokes the small of her back, not quite the way she'd stroke a cat's fur but it's close to it, a gesture Kisa knows so well. Ingibjorg will be leaving in just a few days' time, with her young daughter and her retinue, returning to her kingdom across the water that feels so far away. Kisa will miss them both but they'll visit again and she'll visit them in return, as soon as she can, as soon as her kingdom can spare her. They're the dearest of friends. They're diplomatic allies. They've made sure their husbands understand the depth and breadth of their great friendship; the two kings have no desire to interfere. They will be happy, just as Kisa thinks her mother was.

Kisa presses her lips to Ingibjorg's forehead. Soon, they'll leave the bed, they'll wash and dress and breakfast with their daughters, they'll laugh and smile and play. And lately, she understands exactly how her mother must have felt. 

For her friend and for her daughter, she would do anything. Just like her mother did.


End file.
